Robert William Fogel

Fogel, Robert William, 1926–, American economic historian, b. New York, N.Y., Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1964. He has taught at Univ. of Chicago (1964–75, 1981–) and Harvard (1975–81). In 1993 Fogel shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science with Douglass North for their role in developing cliometrics—the use of economic theory and quantitative techniques to understand economic history; also known as new economic history—and for the increased understanding of process of economic change that their work enabled. Fogel's early work focused on U.S. railways; he has also studied the economic basis of slavery and the economics of health and health care. His works include Railroads and American Economic Growth (1964); Time on the Cross (with Stanley L. Engerman, 1974), a provocative study that argued slavery in the United States was an economically viable institution; and Economic Growth, Population Theory and Physiology (1994).

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